The National Bibliography of Indian Literature: 1901 - 1953
(NBIL); 4 v. (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1962 - 1974), is a
selective bibliography. It was compiled by a group of distinguished
language specialists under the editorship of B. S. Kesavan, the then
Director of the National Library. In addition to the original four
volumes of the bibliography, the project was extended to include a
fifth volume (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1990), ed. by Kartik Chandra
Dutt. Nearly 56,000 titles with imprints prior to 1954 in twenty-two
Indian languages are listed in the bibliography.

The scope of the NBIL is defined in the introduction as
encompassing books "of literary merit, and important and significant
books on Philosophy, Religion, History and the other aspects of the
Humanities, written with originality, imagination and literary taste .
. . ." In other words, the title of the bibliography should be
construed broadly to include all of the humanities.

Editors and Languages

The scholars selected to edit sections of the NBIL within the
scope of this project include:

Assamese -- Birinchi Kumar Barua, former Dean of the Faculty of
Arts, and Professor and Head of the Department of Assamese Language
and Literature at Gauhati University;

Urdu -- Prof. Al-i-Ahmad Suroor, a prominent critic and former
Professor of Urdu at Aligarh University and Kashmir University.

Subject Areas Covered

Selection principles used in creation of the NBIL were defined
by the editorial staff and applied by the section editors. Each
language was divided into the following units and the criteria of
selection defined as:

General works: important bibliographies produced in that language, general encyclopedias, and dictionaries of the language;

Philosophy and religion: only works of significance or of literary merit;

Social sciences: educational, social, economic, and political works, written with originality, imagination, and literary distinction;

Linguistics: works that contribute to a better understanding of the origin, history, and nature of the language;

Arts: outstanding art portfolios and books about the arts;

Literature: works of literary merit and abiding value in the areas of general works (including histories of literature, anthologies, general works on literary criticism, and so forth), poetry, drama, fiction, essay, letters, humor and satire, and miscellaneous literature;

History: seminal works on all periods of history, including biography, autobiography, and travel; and

Miscellaneous: books of significance and literary merit which do not fall under any of the categories above.